Granite quarrying in Cap Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada

Source: Globe and Mail

- Source: JEREMY FRASER Cape Breton Post . December 17, 2017

Several struggles in Cape Breton against quarrying, e.g. in Kluskap’s Mountain, of spiritual importance to Mi’kmaq people. Opposition to extraction of aggregate for road building in the US. Similar cases in Canso and elsewhere.

Description

We shall consider two related protests, out of many. One is about Kluscap mountains, a sacred area (also known as Kelly Mountain). The second is in Canso, Guysborough County.

The first protests on Kluscap started decades ago. In the autumn of 1996, Sulian Stone Eagle Herney—Mi’kmaq elder from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, director of the Sacred Mountain Society (SMS), and founder of the First Nations Environmental Network— was invited to talk to an audience at the Stone Angel Café in downtown Ottawa. (5) He spoke of the inseparable relationship between First Nations people and nature/land on which claims to sovereignty were based. He had become an environmentalist, he explained, because without land there would be nothing to be a First Nationist about. He traced his growing intervention in environmental politics to the struggle against a corporate proposal to quarry Kluskap’s Mountain, the site of a cave sacred to Kluskap, a figure of central spiritual importance to Mi’kmaq people, to produce aggregate for road building in the US. Earlier, Herney had been invited to appear before the public inquiry into a superquarry at Lingerbay, southeast Harris, Scotland, "Herney’s appearance on the Isle of Harris suggests both a common purpose amidst diversity of postcolonial experience at a global level and a certain measure of irony, given the participation of those forced from the land in the Outer Hebrides during the Clearances of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the colonisation of Nova Scotia (Dalby and Mackenzie 1997; Hunter 1994). On Harris, Herney spoke on that occasion of the rekindling of “traditional values and codes of conduct … that reawakened the true Mi’kmaq spirit and spiritual connection to Mother Earth and theCreator”. (5).

The conflict on the Kluscap (or Kelly) mountain continues in 2017 (1). Another granite quarrying conflict takes place near Canso, by the Vulcan Materials Corporation (see Project Details).

These conflicts ate interrelated. In 2017, the Mining Association of Nova Scotia released a report stating that Cape Breton is being harmed by the provincial government’s Parks and Protected Areas Plan, which limits or prevents mining on development on 154 known mineral occurrences on the island. One of those potential projects is an aggregate deposit in Victoria County that is completely covered by the Kluscap Wilderness Area. Sean Kirby, executive director of the Mining Association of Nova Scotia, said the Kellys Mountain project has the potential to create 80 direct jobs for 50 years or more. “It’s very similar in fact to the quarry that’s at the Strait of Canso...". , he said. (3) However, Rod Googoo, chief of Waycobah First Nation, says Kellys Mountain is sacred to the Mi’kmaq people, who call it Kluscap Mountain. According to Mi’kmaq legend, the prophet Kluscap (or Glooscap) lived in a seaside cave, known locally as the fairy hole, near Cape Dauphin, at the northern tip of the Kluscap Wilderness Area.

“It’s been in our oral tradition for centuries — they always talked about that. We don’t have a written a history — we have an oral history — and we’ve always spoken about Kluscap Mountain as having a very sacred connection to us,” said Googoo, who is also the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaq Chiefs’ lead chief for lands, wildlife and forestry.

“We, the Mi’kmaq people, we would never dare enter into any place which is considered sacred by any other race — whether it be a temple, whether it be a church, whether it be a mosque — and disrespect it, or deface it, or do something that’s taboo.”(3).

Kirby said while the Mining Association of Nova Scotia agrees with the basic objectives of the protected areas plan, there can be a better balance between the environment and the economy. He suggested a provincially regulated “land swap” mechanism that would allow mining companies to trade other ecologically valuable land for land in protected areas that have valuable mineral deposits.(3).

(This refers to one of the proposed quarriesin Canso.. The Kluscap (or Kelly) mountains is another famous case, (4).

A) If the Canso project meets environmental and corporate approvals, construction could begin as early as 2018, bringing with it an anticipated capital investment of $80-million to $100-million (U.S.) and as many as 150 direct and indirect jobs. Over as many as 50 years, developer Vulcan Materials Co. wants to blast and chop up to 400 million tonnes of its granite to ship down the Atlantic coast, where it would be used in roads from Virginia to Florida. (2)

B) Kluscap (or Kelly Mountain). The Mining Association of Nova Scotia hopes to develop a quarry in the area of Kellys mountain in Cape Breton, but the Mi’kmaq say the land is sacred.

The picturesque landscape is covered by the Kluscap wilderness and considered First Nation's holy ground, but the association believes there’s an aggregate deposit of over 2 billion tonnes on the mountain in New Harris, Nova Scotia. .Protesters from First Nations communities gathered near the mountain Saturday, Nov. 25, 2017.

“This mountain is sacred to us because it is the departure point of our hero in Kluscap,” says protester, Suzanne Patles. “It is the home of the Kluscap caves where we performed ceremonies.”

“If we were able to make a quarry there it would employ about 80 people directly for a half century so it's a tremendous economic opportunity for the province,” says Kirby. “ Johnanna Padelt from the Inverness Chapter Council of Canada says it’s not the first time the idea of mining or quarrying on Kelly’s Mountain has been discussed. She was part of a group protesting against a company called Kelly Rock Ltd., in the late 1980's.(6).

Creation of alternative reports/knowledge Involvement of national and international NGOs Objections to the EIA Official complaint letters and petitions Street protest/marches Arguments for the rights of mother nature Refusal of compensation

Visible: Loss of traditional knowledge/practices/cultures, Land dispossession, Loss of landscape/sense of placePotential: Violations of human rights

Other

Impact of wilderness which is of spiritual value to First Nations.

Outcome

Project Status

Proposed (exploration phase)

Pathways for conflict outcome / response

Compensation Under negotiation

Development of Alternatives

Conserve wilderness and sacred spaces, Support tourism.

Do you consider this as a success?

Not Sure

Why? Explain briefly.

Some of the proposed sites for quarrying granite still under discussion by 2017. The Mining Association of Nova Scotia is proposing "land swaps" (although it is difficult to swap sacred sites).

Sources and Materials

References

(5) Moving Mountains: Community and Resistance in the Isle of Harris, Scotland, and Cape Breton, Canada. A Fiona D Mackenzie and Simon Dalby. Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University,

SYDNEY, N.S.The provincial government has approved the Money Point quarry expansion in northern Cape Breton following an environmental assessment review.

The decision was released by Environment Minister Iain Rankin on Friday afternoon along with conditions that must be met. Dexter Mining Inc. of Bedford wants to increase production at a gravel quarry it currently operates on top of Money Point Mountain, near Bay St. Lawrence, to 50,000 tonnes per year for the next 40 years.[click to view]